About the work
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5 in E minor, op. 64, was completed in 1888 and premiered the same year in St Petersburg under Tchaikovsky's own baton. The work is, alongside the Sixth (Pathétique) and the Fourth, his most-performed symphony and a key example of Russian late Romanticism.
Plot
The symphony comprises four movements with a total duration of about 50 minutes. The motto theme — a brooding clarinet melody at the start of the first movement — recurs in all four movements as a „fate motif" and gives the work its cyclical unity. First movement, Andante — Allegro con anima: brooding opening, drives to a powerful Allegro full of dramatic outbursts. Second movement, Andante cantabile, with one of the most famous horn solos of the symphonic repertoire — a lyrical, hymn-like melody, twice interrupted by the threatening fate motif. Third movement, Valse — Allegro moderato: an unusual replacement of the traditional scherzo with a ballroom waltz of melancholic grace. Fourth movement, Andante maestoso — Allegro vivace: the fate motif appears at last in a triumphal major key. The closing march transforms doubt into victory — although Tchaikovsky himself remained unsure whether the apparent triumph was authentic.
Cultural significance
Tchaikovsky's Fifth is one of the most-performed Romantic symphonies. The horn solo of the second movement is one of the most famous solo passages in the orchestral repertoire. Famous recordings include those by Wilhelm Furtwängler, Yevgeny Mravinsky, Herbert von Karajan, Leonard Bernstein, Valery Gergiev, Mariss Jansons. The symphony was used in the Second World War as an anti-Nazi sign of resistance — the Mariinsky-Leningrad Philharmonic played it in besieged Leningrad in 1942.